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ASCENT: An Algorithmic Technique for Designing Hardware and Software in Tandem
November/December 2010 (vol. 36 no. 6)
pp. 838-851
ASCII Text
x 
 
Jules White, Brian Doughtery, Douglas C. Schmidt, "ASCENT: An Algorithmic Technique for Designing Hardware and Software in Tandem," IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, vol. 36, no. 6, pp. 838-851, November/December, 2010.
 
 
BibTex
x
 
@article{ 10.1109/TSE.2010.77,
author = {Jules White and Brian Doughtery and Douglas C. Schmidt},
title = {ASCENT: An Algorithmic Technique for Designing Hardware and Software in Tandem},
journal ={IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering},
volume = {36},
number = {6},
issn = {0098-5589},
year = {2010},
pages = {838-851},
doi = {http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/TSE.2010.77},
publisher = {IEEE Computer Society},
address = {Los Alamitos, CA, USA},
}
 
 
RefWorks Procite/RefMan/Endnote
x 
 
TY - JOUR
JO - IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering
TI - ASCENT: An Algorithmic Technique for Designing Hardware and Software in Tandem
IS - 6
SN - 0098-5589
SP838
EP851
EPD - 838-851
A1 - Jules White,
A1 - Brian Doughtery,
A1 - Douglas C. Schmidt,
PY - 2010
KW - Algorithms
KW - computer aided software engineering
KW - optimization methods
KW - distributed computing.
VL - 36
JA - IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering
ER -
 
Jules White, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg
Brian Doughtery, Vanderbilt University, Nashville
Douglas C. Schmidt, Vanderbilt University, Nashville
Search-based software engineering is an emerging paradigm that uses automated search algorithms to help designers iteratively find solutions to complicated design problems. For example, when designing a climate monitoring satellite, designers may want to use the minimal amount of computing hardware to reduce weight and cost while supporting the image processing algorithms running onboard. A key problem in these situations is that the hardware and software designs are locked in a tightly coupled cost-constrained producer/consumer relationship that makes it hard to find a good hardware/software design configuration. Search-based software engineering can be used to apply algorithmic techniques to automate the search for hardware/software designs that maximize the image processing accuracy while respecting cost constraints. This paper provides the following contributions to research on search-based software engineering: 1) We show how a cost-constrained producer/consumer problem can be modeled as a set of two multidimensional multiple-choice knapsack problems (MMKPs), 2) we present a polynomial-time search-based software engineering technique, called the Allocation-baSed Configuration Exploration Technique (ASCENT), for finding near optimal hardware/software codesign solutions, and 3) we present empirical results showing that ASCENT's solutions average over 95 percent of the optimal solution's value.

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Index Terms:
Algorithms, computer aided software engineering, optimization methods, distributed computing.
Citation:
Jules White, Brian Doughtery, Douglas C. Schmidt, "ASCENT: An Algorithmic Technique for Designing Hardware and Software in Tandem," IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, vol. 36, no. 6, pp. 838-851, Nov.-Dec. 2010, doi:10.1109/TSE.2010.77
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